An analysis of the Public Expenditure Management frameworks in Zimbabwe: The case of the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing.

Abstract

The issue of Public Expenditure Management gained much attention from many organisations and governments globally. Governments and organisations the whole world has expressed the need to provide quality goods and services to people at a minimum cost. Zimbabwe as a country is not an exception to this trend. Since its independence in 1980, Zimbabwe as a country has put in place policies and programs of cutting public expenditure. These policies and programs are implemented through various frameworks that range from policy frameworks, legal or legislative frameworks, institutional frameworks and procedural and processes amongst others. However, in Zimbabwe these frameworks are yet to prove their effectiveness as government ministries, departments and agencies still incur high cost in their endeavor to deliver public goods and services. Evidence to this include the problems of overspending, exceeding budgets limits, payments that are not supported by receipts and invoices, flouting of tender and procurement procedures and absence of risk management policies and debt recovery strategies. Hence this study sought to analyse the frameworks that are being used by public sector institutions in managing public expenditures. The Ministry of Local Government, Public works and National Housing was used as a case study and its findings will be used to generalise the scenario in the public sector. Literature review of the study revealed that frameworks for PEM aim at achieving four outcomes namely aggregate fiscal discipline, allocative efficiency, operational efficiency and the societal dimension by instituting sound corporate governance to achieve values such as transparency, accountability, integrity, honest and equity in the use of public resources. The study took a qualitative stunt and used a concoction of interviews, open-ended questionnaires and documentary search as research instruments to collect data from the field and participants were purposively selected from different organisations. The study also use thematic, content and descriptive analysis to analyse the data gathered. The findings of the study revealed that the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing has a number of instruments ranging from institutional, policy and legal frameworks and processes available to it to manage its expenditure. Despite the compelling factor of sound Public Expenditure Management frameworks challenges such as political directives, lack of motivation, managerial override, and the inflexibility of the system among others were noted as factors militating against the success of PEM initiatives in the ministry. Thus the study also identified a cocktail of challenges that negatively impact the organisation in managing its expenditure. Accordingly, the study recommends that there is need to implement frameworks such as Medium Term Expenditure Framework, motivate employees and setting out realistic budgets to mention a few were proffered to mitigate these challenges and to make expenditure reduction initiatives viable.